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Windows 2000 CLI Email Clients?
man_ls asks: "I am running a TELNET server for myself and some friends out of my house using Windows 2000 Telnet Services, and would like to provide them with the ability to send and receive e-mails through the command line. I'm currently using fmail unregistered, which has send-only ability, and tried PC-PINE but it wouldn't run on the command line. Does anyone know of a command line mail program that will run under Windows 2000, and can both send and receive e-mail messages?" And we all know how popular usable Such a program would be a cool thing indeed! Are there such beasts, or has the rather un-popularity of CLI apps under Win32 rendered such things obsolete?
If you're running IIS5's SMTP server, you can use CDO for Win2K from JScript or VBScript to send messages. CDO is a set of COM objects that wrap around MIME-compliant messages, so you can build or parse email messages.
If you don't have IIS SMTP, there are a number of SMTP client COM objects around; you can then write a JScript/VBScript/VB/C++ app that drives the COM object.
You also might want to look into something called blat -- it's another SMTP client implementation (not COM-based, IIRC).
The previous edition of this CD was very good. It installed all the standard suite of GNU tools, including bash, emacs, gcc, perl, awk, grep, etc. It puts everything in one directory, no messing with the registry and shit, so it is easy to uninstall (just delete that directory). Also, using these tools does not restrict your freedom; you have the source code and the free use of it, and these same tools will be available to you should you work on other operating systems and architectures. For me, the advantage over cygwin was the nice package of stuff on the CD with the setup script, because most of the machines I was installing this on didn't have network connections.
I would advise installing either that CD or the cygwin package and teaching your friends to use emacs and one of the mail readers in it, such as rmail or gnus (I personally use gnus but it was a bit of a learning curve). I know gnus can be configured to use a remote pop server such as a yahoo account, and the other mail readers probably can also.
I am looking forward to using the new edition of this CD on a free operating system -- FreeDos -- for the first time, and I also supported the FSF by purchasing this (3 copies) and T-shirts as well.
The page for ordering the CD (and other FSF stuff) is here, and the description of the CD is here.
If Cygwin doesn't run under telnet, you might be able to run a telnet server under Cygwin. Same result.
Here's a useful page that covers Pine, Cygwin, and other related topics.
you need to set your terminal type to ANSI and then it will work fine.
i cant rememeber the command but a windows junkie put me in my place last week when i said how much windows telnet sucked rocks and he was using pine in no time.
If you can you should use SSH instead, i strongly recommmend Putty (search google and its the first page).
MS telnet still sucks rocks
And there is no need to run it - Cygwin comes with an ssh daemon. It's fairly easy to set up, just run ssh-host-config. You can run it as a Win2K service if you want. Also, as I'm sure many others will mention, Cygwin includes the coolest text-mode email client, mutt. It's hightly configurable, with colors and split panes and whatnot.
The real problem you may have is that confronted with a command line interface, many windows users get confused. I used to work in tech support and people were always trying to use the mouse on apps that were running in a command shell. Needless to say this caused a lot of frustration.
vi /usr/mail/ratbert
read: it will take people an extra week or two to crack my system, putting my system into a state that I can not rely upon, and that can cause other people lots of annoyance through DDoS clients.
It is unneighborly to leave your system open, because it lets people launch attacks from it. You do not need to check your email so often that you can't skip the airport terminals' telnet program.
There is a cost associated with sticking a computer on the Internet, whether you are being paid to do so or not. Basic security is not optional, it is part of that cost. There are solutions by which you can use ssh (java ssh clients, cd-rs of ssh clients for popular operating systems, etc.).
You'll have to do some work, so consider it part of increasing your knowledge about the system - knowledge of what you'll have to do any time you put a server on the Internet.
And Windows users wonder what it is that gives them a bad name...
--Matthew
Nicely Put.
I especially liked how he said he doesn't have anything senstive and only a handful of admin accounts. Imagine that. Its people like him that allowed Code Red to fill my apache logs.